About Matthew

My path from cyclist to scientist to songwriter makes some sense, at least to me. Drawn to the arts, even if lacking the sturdy constitution to make it a career, I married an artist and have been surrounded by the arts for my entire adult life. I’ve grown to love playing music with others (I’m thankful for vaccines). And songwriting and performing have become my means of creative expression.

On coming to songwriting in one’s 50’s

It’s not unusual for us to feel that a songwriter’s best work came early. Not at the earliest possible point in their trajectory, but perhaps as they’re coming to some sort of grown up level of maturity. And maybe what they’ve had to say in more recent years is not quite as compelling?

I wrote my first song in 2009, within weeks of my 50th birthday. I don’t necessarily feel that those very first songs were better or worse than what followed, even if my musical skill set has grown.

As a young person I had wanted a creative means of expression. As I worked my way through graduate school, began raising kids while focused on a career, it wasn’t the time to think about creative side endeavors. But then the kids were half-way grown, my career was into its third decade, and I wrote that first song. A couple more in that first season, and now I’ve been writing for more than a dozen years.

I so appreciate being able to make sense of things through the writing, through the process of creating a story or meaningful image through song. Equally, I appreciate sharing through performance, whether you’re just listening and taking it in or catching hold of a thought that I might (or might not) have meant to include in the song.

Back in the late ’90’s Mary and I attended the smaller of two Unitarian Universalist congregations in Boulder County (I’m Jewish but admire the UU creed!). The minister was someone who had found her calling as an older person, in a second career. Our rabbi in Santa Fe, Marvin Schwab, also came to it as a second career and I felt the same affinity to him.

Although I took up guitar a decade before songwriting, that’s not exactly an early start. I do wish I had played music in those years after my school-aged dabbling in piano and guitar. But I’m fine with coming to songwriting as an older person.

Thank you for listening to the music.